If it is in a different dimension why would there be a problem with it being in the same place. — Sir2u

Because it's in a different dimension. Are you in the same place as me when I'm in Times Square and you're 10 miles above?

eah, empirical is anything that can be scientifically perceived to be even more accurate. — Agustino

Is there perception that can't be scientifically perceived? What does that mean?

Empirical is the domain of experience, feeling, thought, belief, idea, etc. — bahman

Empirical is perception only.

Time does not lie on a point. It is a psychological feeling imbued in the mind. We feel time pass we do not see it pass and we associate this passage of time with changes in memory. — Rich

I can watch things change right now. Time at the very least is empirical.

Do they both speak one different language before meeting? Yes or no? — Agustino

Like Hopi and English?

For you to easily understand that when I point at myself and say "Agustino" and then point at you I mean that "My name is Agustino, what is yours?" you must already have understood the grammar of name (ie how names are used, what kind of things they refer to, etc.). — Agustino

Sure, I'm going to understand that all human beings have names (unless they're feral), and when they point to themselves and say something, odds are they're saying their name. That or a pronoun.

And in fact Wittgenstein is right - feral children and similar cases who have NOT learned conceptual grammar, struggle mightily to learn any language whatsoever. — Agustino

But we weren't talking about feral children. I brought up anthropologists and different language speakers meeting for the first time, like the Europeans in the new world.

Somehow they still manage to learn to speak each other's languages. I'm guessing the don't start off with grammar.

So once I understand the grammar of - say - English, it's much easier to learn French by pointing me to stuff. — Agustino

Yeah, but you're not going to know the grammar for an unknown language.

Wouldn't you start out by pointing out objects and saying the word for them, after maybe giving your name?

There are many times in history when humans have encountered groups they had no previous contact with, with individuals from both learning each other's languages.

It might be occupying the same place. — Sir2u

How could it occupy the same place?

If I point you to a red apple trying to teach you what red is, I might say "This is red". But how will you know if by that I refer to the color, the shape, the fruit, etc.? — Agustino

But then how do anthropologists go about learning an unknown language from some tribe in New Guinea upon first contact? Wouldn't the equivalent of pointing out objects and saying "red" occur? You can point to apple and say "apple", then point to something red and say "red", then back to apple and say "red". Given a few examples, the person will probably catch on that you're talking about the color versus the name of the object.

Interesting idea. Where does the value stem from, then? Internal experience? Social interaction?

Not all theists are Christians. Christians generally have well defined concepts about God, the afterlife, etc.

Boy, Christians would not like that. — Mitchell

Most Christians think they can talk about God, so they wouldn't understand the Wittgenstein quote.

It's only theists who define God in purely negative terms for which that would apply.

Do you think it is possible to actually desire the bad, knowing that it is bad and that nothing good will come of it? — Mitchell

Yep, I have done so myself out of spite, anger, jealousy or bitterness, and have seen others do so. Also, I've stood at the ledge of a building or cliff and realized that I could choose to jump to my death or push someone for no reason other than being impulsive. I would count that as evil.

And then there are sociopaths who don't care about the good. To quote Batman's butler, "Some men just want to see the world burn".

It's troubling when there's nobody around to enforce the rules of good conduct. However, I expect banishment from the society to be in general the most severe form of punishment in said primitive or such societies. — Posty McPostface

It sounded like the Amish punishment for rape was not very severe, to say the least. And in a society where you're allowed to kill a relative because you think they've been possessed by an evil spirit, there is no recourse.

suppose Jesus always knew best, but one has to wonder whether Lazarus, who was already starting to stink pretty badly, really wanted to come back to life. — Bitter Crank

Guess that depends on where he was hanging out while he was dead?

There was an X-Files episode where these idiots uncovered a genie who gave them three wishes. One idiot wished to be invisible, and then he got run over by a bus who didn't see him. So his friend/brother idiot wished for him to come back to life, and he came back as a walking corpse.

What is "calling"? — Noble Dust

What Bitter Crank said. Jesus was talking to people who expressed an interest in being his followers, which seemed to involve leaving your old life behind and follow him around and learn from his teachings.

All this because the Kingdom of Heaven was near, whatever Jesus meant by that.

It's interesting to note how some tribes or primitive societies go about the whole ordeal. I'm on my cell and don't have the papers but it would seem that people in said primitive societies feel a much greater sense of.bond with their fellow kindsmen. I assume that would be another prerequisite for the golden rule to be maintained in practice. — Posty McPostface

Maybe so, but there was a show on how this Amish girl ended up going to the police because her brothers were repeatedly raping her, and the Amish community's punishment had not succeeded in stopping it.

She probably couldn't go back, but you realize that sometimes those small communities don't have a good way of handling certain situations.

Or take an actual tribe (I don't recall where this was, some jungle) where if you come to believe that your relative has been possessed by an evil spirit, you're supposed to kill them.

=

Said in the same vain as what Jesus said to the rich young man who wanted to follow Him: "First, go and sell all you have." The young man went away sadly [because he couldn't give up his wealth].

"Your family business comes second to the Kingdom of God." or worse than second. It's a tough demand. — Bitter Crank

Or cut off your hand if it causes you to sin. Of course all of that can be interpreted in a non-literal sense, but it seems to be saying everything else is secondary to your calling. I'm not sure you can build a modern society on the back of Jesus's teachings.

Restorative justice could be applied to older offenders and more serious crimes, too, but with more state involvement and likely still involve jail and/or a fine. — Bitter Crank

To a point, but I wonder what sort of restorative justice a rapist would do, since you don't want to further traumatize their victim. Or what you would have a murderer do that wouldn't be a total affront to the victim's family and friends.

You mean the walking dead, or what? — Noble Dust

Luke 9:59-60:

He said to another man, "Follow me." But he replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

Jesus made quite a few statements that would not be good for society as a whole.

The Golden Rule begin with the self because we can only know what guilt and punishment feel like for ourselves. — Bitter Crank

Part of retributive justice is being aware that if you decide that bashing your neighbor's head in and stealing their stuff is a tempting idea, there could be serious consequences for doing so.

That won't inhibit everyone, as some people aren't wired to worry too much about consequences. But my guess is your average person is somewhat inhibited from doing bad things on occasion because they know they could go to jail.

Another way to frame your Golden Rule question is to ask what would you want to happen if you're the victim? Or what would you want to happen to your neighbor who was victimized?

Jesus never went into detail about how the Golden Rule should or should not be applied in every situation. He's just recorded spouting off maxims and performing miracles.

But he never set down and wrote a treatise on how a society would be arranged around such maxims.

What if everyone let the dead bury themselves? Would that be a good maxim for society? Probably not.

So meaning that if you committed murder, you would want justice served to yourself, right? — Noble Dust

Hopefully, if I have any decency. But I'm also prone to being self-interested, like everyone else. That's why I won't get to try myself or pass my own sentence.

Same deal if a loved one committed murder. I might want to see them get off or serve a lighter sentence. But I don't get to decide. That would be biased.

What I want, when self-interest and bias is removed, is for everyone to be held accountable for such crimes. That's the kind of society I prefer to live in.

What's the superior alternative? Someone robs, rapes, commits murder, defrauds customers, steals identities and ruins credit. What should we do about such crimes?

The golden rule is just one maxim. I might endeavor to treat my neighbor as myself, but when he kills another neighbor, I want justice to be served.

Notice that I said another neighbor, not myself. This other neighbor could be somebody I never even talk to, and I still want my murderous neighbor arrested and tried, and if found guilty, sent away.

It's also that Chavaka espoused the problem of induction as part of it's epistemology. Hume is credited with that, and he probably stated it in more modern terms, but he wasn't the first.

I feel like almost all philosophy I've been exposed to is exclusively Western, and almost all credit is given to Westerners.

One of the questions that fascinated me was the relation of personal identity to the memories others have of you. — Mitchell

Soderbergh's movie also explored this angle. I've read the book the two movies are based on by Stanislaw Lem, and the focus was a bit different. Lem was interested in whether communication was possible with a truly alien being. The characters in the book struggled with the failure of science and all other attempts to communicate with the sentient ocean on Solaris. It was clearly intelligent in some manner, but it was so different from anything humans understood.

As a last resort, they had their brain scans beamed over the ocean, after which recreations of lost loved ones from memory started to appear. The guess was that the ocean was attempting to communicate in it's own way, but didn't understand humans anymore than we had understood it, thus resulting in the strange and painful reunions.

Most basically, so that it can accomplish goals. — praxis

The pragmatic answer. Do you think the mind can accomplish goals without somewhat faithfully representing objects?

When I see a cliff and feel vertigo, is my mind representing accurately the danger to my body? Or is that just an illusion?

Material or physical objects are represented in the mind. These representation are not the objects themselves. This doesn't address the nature of the objects. — praxis

This assumes the nature of the objects cannot be known via representations in the mind.

Here's a question. Why does the mind represent objects the way it does?

I don't know what a view from nowhere is other than no view at all. It makes more sense to say that an objective view is a view from everywhere, not nowhere. — Harry Hindu

It's considered "nowhere" because it has been stripped of all subjective qualities. The world portrayed by science doesn't look, sound, taste, smell or feel like anything. And It's not from a particular vantage point.

I would be astonished if such disputes did not arise. — andrewk

But when I go and read on SEP, or a layman's philosophy book, it doesn't get bogged down with semantics. Things are defined as needed to setup the argument or examine the different positions, and that's that.

What really brings the issue to mind was a discussion on here a while back concerning whether color irrealism was a threat to direct realism. That went about 31 pages until the discussion was completely derailed by arguments over what "direct" and "realism" meant.

Physicalists believe that all that exists is the fundamental entities disclosed by physics, whatever they turn out to be - it used to be ‘atoms’ but atoms themselves are now rather spooky kinds of things. — Wayfarer

That's not an entirely fair description. It's too reductionist, and commits physicalists to mereological nihilism. Chalmers defines physicalism as the fundamental entities plus whatever logically supervenes on those.

He just doesn't think that mind (qualia at least) logically supervenes, therefore he's a dualist.

There are several ways to think about the distinction.

I think Locke's primary/secondary qualities captures it nicely.

One can also think of it in terms of the difficulty in reducing qualia, intentionality and indexicality to physical terms, while at the same time finding the idealist explanation for space, time, particles, etc to be unbelievable.

Or one can just say that the physical is mathemitizeable, while the mental is not. Meillassoux's version of speculative realism might fall into this, although he talks in terms of transcending Kant's correlationism to get at the mathematical reality.

On a more meta level, there is Nagel's subjective/objective split, with science being the view from nowhere, which is objective, and subjectivity being a view from somewhere.

The large objects jumping and landing and the consequent shock-waves that would follow are some way or another conveyed in the illusion, and so the noise is perhaps tailored in the brains attempt at filling in the gaps. — Qurious

I suppose auditory illusion is the better categorization.

Do we experience any sounds coming from our ears? Our ears are a stereo system that help place sounds appropriately in space. So we hear sounds coming from the place they are likely being made. — apokrisis

I perceive sound external to my ears, and that sound can hurt my ears if it's loud or shrill enough. This is different. It's like an internal auditory hallucination.

My impression that the key differences of opinion were over what constitutes a 'definition', and what constitutes a 'proof'. — andrewk

No wonder philosophy discussions on forums never get anywhere. It always turns into a semantic dispute over terms people normally have no trouble understanding.

Maybe we can go all the way back to the theorized big bang. — ff0

I don't think we need to go all the way back to the big bang to explain the rain satisfactorily. In my OP, I admitted that at some point, we run out of the ability to explain, and then we're left with brute existence. But we don't need to do that with experience.

Anyway, even if the universe is brute, that still explains our experiences of it. We experience a world, because it's there to be experienced (or better yet, we're animals living inside that world whose survival is dependent on perceiving the world to a certain degree of fidelity).

I guess this depends on what you take for an explanation. If I can take some concepts and numbers and build a reliable prediction machine, that's great. Is this an explanation? Obviously we want reliable prediction. No complaint there. But why is this explanation? — ff0

Why does it rain? Because heat from the sun evaporates the water which eventually turns into rain clouds. Sounds like an explanation to me.

Science is both prediction and explanation. The explanation gives rise to prediction, which allows for the explanation to be tested.